1. Editorial Note

Following the election of November 4, 1960, President-elect John F. Kennedy and his transition
advisers focused among other things on questions involving the
organization and administration of foreign policy, particularly
proposals for modifying and streamlining the structure of the National
Security Council apparatus as it had developed during the Eisenhower administration. Among
principal transition advisers to the President-elect were Clark M.
Clifford, a Washington attorney who had served as Special Counsel to
President Truman, and Richard E.
Neustadt, Professor of Public Law and Government at Columbia University.
Clifford served as a channel of communication with the Eisenhower administration and
maintained contact with General Wilton B.
Persons, President Eisenhower’s Assistant, from the time of their first
meeting on November 14, 1960, through the weeks that followed. See
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
A Thousand Days: John
F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1965), pages 118–127, 209–210; and Bromley K. Smith, Organizational History of the National Security
Council During the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations
(Washington: National Security Council, 1988), pages 5–14.

Several transition memoranda Neustadt prepared for President-elect
Kennedy dealt with aspects of the organization
and administration of foreign policy. These included “Staffing the
President-Elect,” October 30, 1960; “Conversation with Richard Bissell
about a ’Personal Assistant to the Commander-in-Chief-Elect’,” November
25, 1960; “The National Security Council: First Steps,” December 8,
1960; “Next Steps in Staffing the White House and Executive Office,”
December 9, 1960; and “Introducing McGeorge
Bundy to General Persons,” January 3, 1961. Copies of
these memoranda are in the Kennedy Library, National Security Files,
Departments and Agencies Series, Richard E. Neustadt.

On December 6 President-elect Kennedy met with
President Eisenhower at the White
House. They discussed various subjects, including the organization and
operation of the White House staff, the National Security Council, and
the Pentagon. Eisenhower urged
the President-elect to avoid any reorganization until “he himself could
become well acquainted with the problem.” The full text of Eisenhower’s account of the meeting is
in the Eisenhower Library,
Whitman File, Eisenhower Diaries. It is printed in The
White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956–1961, pages 712–716. See
also Foreign
Relations, 1958–1960, volume III, page 493.

During the transition period the President-elect was influenced by the
findings and recommendations of the Senate Subcommittee on National
Policy Machinery of the Committee on Government Operations, chaired by
Senator Henry M. Jackson of
Washington. Senator Jackson had
begun hearings on the national security system in 1959, and Neustadt had
become a consultant to the subcommittee. The subcommittee’s initial
recommendations, first released during the transition period on November
22, 1960, largely coincided with Kennedy’s views on streamlining the
National Security Council mechanism. See Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, pages 209–210; Smith, Organizational History, pages 5–7. For the first published
Jackson subcommittee hearings and reports from
the 86th Congress, Second Session, and the 87th Congress, First Session,
see Organizing for National Security: Inquiry of the
Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery of the Committee on
Government Operations, United States Senate; vol. 1, Hearings;
vol. 2, Studies and Background Material; and vol. 3, Staff Reports and
Recommendations (Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961).

On January 1, 1961, in announcing the appointment of McGeorge Bundy as his Special Assistant
for National Security Affairs, Kennedy indicated
that he had been impressed by the recommendations of the
Jackson Subcommittee, and that these would
provide a starting point for the task of reorganizing the operations of
the National Security Council. The President-elect stated: “I intend to
consolidate under Mr. Bundy’s
direction the present National Security Council secretariat, the staff
and functions of the Operations Coordinating Board, and the continuing
functions of a number of special projects staffs within the White House.
I have asked Mr. Bundy to review with care existing
staff organization and arrangements, and to simplify them wherever
possible toward the end that we may have a single, small, but strongly
organized staff unit to assist me in obtaining advice from, and
coordinating operations of, the government agencies concerned with
national security affairs.”

“Mr. Bundy will serve as my
personal assistant on these matters and as director of whatever staff we
find is needed for the purpose. It will be part of his assignment to
facilitate the work of the National [Page 3]Security Council as a body advisory to the President. I intend to seek
advice from the members of the Council, both collectively and
individually, and it is my hope to use the National Security Council and
its machinery more flexibly than in the past. I have been much impressed
with the constructive criticism contained in the recent staff report by
Senator Jackson’s Subcommittee on
National Policy Machinery. The Subcommittee’s study provides a useful
starting point for the work that Mr. Bundy will undertake in helping me to strengthen and to
simplify the operations of the National Security Council.” (Statement
from the Press Office of Senator John F.
Kennedy, Palm Beach, Florida, for release Sunday January
1, 1961; text in Henry M.
Jackson, ed., The National Security
Council: Jackson Subcommittee Papers on
Policy-Making at the Presidential Level (New York: Praeger,
1965), pages 302–303.

Additional documentation on the reorganization of the National Security
Council mechanism during the Kennedy administration
is in Foreign
Relations, 1961–1963, volume VIII. On aspects of the
organization and administration of foreign policy in the
Kennedy administration generally, see also the
following works by participants: George W. Ball, The
Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs (New York: Norton, 1982);
John Kenneth Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1969); Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation (New York: Doubleday, 1967);
Walt W. Rostow, View From the Seventh Floor (New York: Harper
& Row, 1964); Dean Rusk, as
told to Richard Rusk, As I Saw It (New York:
Norton, 1990); and Theodore C.
Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row,
1965).